Jalosk Dal'Virra
Jalosk Dal'Virra is a member of the Sleepwalker Team Yellow-9 maintenance crew aboard the Andromeda Initiative starship Keelah Si'yah. His duties require him and his teammates to come out of cryosleep frequently to perform inspections and diagnostics on the ark during its 600-year journey to the Andromeda galaxy. He is often derided as an ignorant lout owing to his lowborn origins, and is shown to be unversed in basic turns of phrase, though he has some incisive insights regarding batarian and galactic society. Background Hailing from Camala, Jalosk was 46 years old by the time Keelah Si'yah launched for dark space in 2186 CE. His father was a slave, and his grandfather was a red sand addict who did little other than seeking his next fix. His father eventually bought their freedom, and Jalosk was determined to do something with his life, so he managed to lift himself and his family up from laborer caste into the merchant caste, becoming a small-time weapons dealer. Jalosk married three times and fathered two children with the third wife Ukiro Dal'Virra: Zofi, a 9-year-old girl, and Grozik, a 4-year-old boy. Ukiro then left him and married a man from the military caste, taking the kids with her. He didn't begrudge her choice as he saw it as a bold power move and allowed their children a path to further advancement. Eventually Jalosk racked up sizeable debts which led him to sign up with the Initiative. On Hephaestus Station it took him 3 nights before he realized he was drinking with Borbala Ferank, formerly a matriarch of one of the elite families of Khar'shan. He became acquainted with Kholai, a hanar preacher espousing a doomsday interpretation of the Enkindler religion, and apparently started believing its words as well. Shortly before Keelah Si'yah's departure, Camala was invaded by gigantic insectoid things that turned people into husk versions of themselves. Ukiro thought she could keep the kids safe and refused to leave the planet, but Jalosk realized that whatever's attacking them didn't care about caste. He took the children with him against their will and reserved a family berth for themselves aboard the ark. While not performing his Sleepwalker tasks Jalosk slept away the centuries in cryopod BT566. He had teal facial markings and a yellowish-green complexion. He was teammates with Kholai in Yellow-9, and often hung around the hanar after finishing the job. Mass Effect Andromeda: Annihilation Jalosk thaws from cryostasis 3 decades before projected arrival in Andromeda, inexplicably feeling sick, nauseous, itchy, and wondering why the ship is in a darkened state. He makes his way to the medbay where he meets Sleepwalker Team Blue-7, but as soon has he does he retches blood, bile, and the remains of his intestinal lining against the medbay glass. Irit Non immediately pegs Jalosk as the culprit of the pathogen killing drell and hanar in their sleep. Borbala defends him by virtue of being a fellow batarian. Jalosk also protests his innocence, but when he recognizes Borbala he warns the "mother of worms" to stay away from him and would rather insult her than let her vouch for him. The doctor Yorrik immediately advises to put Jalosk in isolation, but the sick batarian doesn't want to be locked up for merely wanting to find medi-gel to soothe his symptoms. Anax Therion therefore biotically throws him into an adjacent iso-chamber. Over the next eighteen hours Jalosk spends his time providing samples and baseline comparisons for Yorrik to determine what ails him, progressively growing sicker. The doctor initially hopes he's just experiencing a bad case of cryosickness, but his symptoms almost immediately tell otherwise. Jalosk develops rashes that turn into Yoqtan-like sores after 3 hours, stops vomiting but starts weeping cerebrospinal fluid, and leaks all other sorts of bodily fluids from edemas on his body. Despite repeated queries to the ship's VI K to verify his identity and whereabouts, Jalosk is always stated to be secure in his cryopod and in perfect condition, with his last revival cascade allegedly back on transit day 164,250. When comms break down and Yorrik tries to verify the rest of his team's locations, Jalosk points out the system's unreliable by asking K where he is, still receiving the same erroneous response. By coincidence he refers to the doctor with "alas, poor Yorrik", but he has no knowledge of the cultural reference and has to be brought up to speed. However, he reckons that important developments must be happening elsewhere in the ship, else the rest of Blue-7 should have returned to the medbay to check on them when the comms went out. Reiterating for the last time he isn't cryosick, Jalosk finds that Yorrik finally agrees with him. After assessing the results of the batarian's biopsies, the elcor tells him he also has the disease that also killed Kholai in its sleep, dubbed the Fortinbras Plague because of its destructive capability. Resigned to his fate, Jalosk bitterly tells Yorrik it's important to him that he should not be seen as a total dullard like Borbala thinks he is. The elites of batarian society look down on merchants like him, but it takes a certain sort of intellect to survive a hardscrabble life, especially compared to the privileges Borbala had and still shat away. Yorrik can only remind him that it doesn't change what's happening to him, and requests that he continue reporting what he feels so he might help the others also infected. Jalosk feels he got shot out of a Hensa-class cruiser, with headaches, fever, and a burning hunger. Unfortunately there are few available stores of food on the ark, and the two can do little else but wait until the reappearance of Captain Qetsi'Olam vas Keelah Si'yah. The captain thinks Jalosk should be euthanized already, but Yorrik still wants to try and save him because he has children. The sick Munitions Specialist muses his kids owe him 10-15% of their future profits, "no less than a brokering agent would receive", since he "brokered" them into existence. That, plus unconditional love, affection, undying loyalty, and the stipulation that they stay nearby where he wants them. Jalosk thinks Zofi and Grozik hate him for taking them away from their mother, but he is only acting out of parental obligation, and with his impending doom they probably will never get the chance to forgive him. He recalls the times he gave his unconditional support to his offspring, like when he nursed his adventurous son back to health when he fell from their habitat roof, or when he consoled his daughter and tended to her wounds when other kids were bullying her, because his elcor and quarian audience look surprised that batarians are capable of such things. He believes no race can evolve without love for their children, else they would've just eaten them for all the trouble they caused. Yorrik remains unconvinced because of the infamous batarian criminal ventures, so Jalosk tells him their rationale. It's because there's a market for their commodities. If rainbows, smiles, and cuddles brought the highest prices, they'd be selling those instead. Batarians do purchase slaves from each other, but the fact that other races whose civilizations progressed comparatively better are willing to buy people at a steep markup says more about them in Jalosk's opinion. After a vicious coughing fit, the batarian laments that he's crying himself to death while he confesses his convictions to these aliens, deeming it an un-batarian way to go. When shown a holographic structure of the Fortinbras Plague, Jalosk finds it beautiful and jokes it should've been named after him since he's the one dying. He hears Ardat-Yakshi forms part of the disease, so he quickly protests that he never had sex with an asari despite wanting to. Nobody he knows has ever met a batarian-asari girl despite all the asari talk about genetic diversity, which tells him they're arrogant and racist. Yorrik attempts to explain the complexities by metaphor, but Jalosk doesn't even know what that is and thinks it's a symptom. The batarian likes that the virus is "ruthless", but Yorrik warns him he'll not like the results on his body. As the doctor plods on with his exposition, Jalosk finds the discussion increasingly difficult to follow. He begins to understand when Yorrik compares the virus to a batarian pirate ship trying to commandeer an asari cruiser or volus frigate: if the batarians seize them then they can be used to attack other unsuspecting craft and turn them into batarian-controlled ships too. After hearing what his R-nought score is, Jalosk finds the plague's name stupid and unpronounceable to his batarian tongue, thinking it sounds human. Ten hours after entering the iso-chamber Jalosk begins drowning in his own skin and hallucinating over the dim blue emergency lights after complaining they were too bright. In a moment of lucidity, he tells Yorrik he thought Andromeda would be different where everyone starts over equally, not just Council races on top again like back in the Milky Way. He holds out hope the batarians and asari's racial qualities become reversed in their new galaxy, but he realizes the social hierarchies will still end up the same. Qetsi agrees with the sick batarian's stance on the inequality, citing the quarians' numerous experiences with prejudice, and swears to him on his death Andromeda will become beautiful on their terms. Jalosk responds with a benediction he learned from Kholai's cult: "The only peace in the universe is entropy. I will see you at the end of all things, sister." Jalosk's remaining hours are spent in delirium and maddened rage, where he fruitlessly batters the containment field of his chamber to try and rip the elcor doctor apart as he dies raving and shrieking. The observations gathered by Yorrik from tracking the progression of Fortinbras Plague in Jalosk and the autopsies before him is broadcast shipwide by Qetsi in the aftermath of a mass revival of passengers from their cryopods. Trivia *Batarian-asari girls do, in fact, exist, regardless of what Jalosk thinks. The only known example in the series so far can be seen on Nos Astra in Mass Effect 2 arguing with her pureblood friend over a barely legal drug shipment.